ON the morning after their arrival, Marcia had risen early and set out
on horseback to explore the neighbourhood. As Castel Vivalanti,
accordingly, was engaged in its usual Saturday-morning sweeping, a
clatter of horses’ hoofs suddenly sounded on the tiny Corso (the paving
is so villainous that a single horse, however daintily it may step,
sounds like a cavalcade), and running to the door, the inhabitants of
the village beheld the new _signorina Americana_ gaily riding up the
narrow way and smiling to the right and left, for all the world like
the queen herself. The women contented themselves with standing in the
doorways and staring open-mouthed, but the children ran boldly after,
until the signorina presently dismounted and bidding the groom hold her
horse, sat down upon a door-step and talked to them with as much
friendliness as though she had known them all her life. She ended by
asking them what in the world they liked best to eat, and they declared
in a single voice for ‘_Cioccolata_.’
Accordingly they moved in a body to the baker’s, and, to Domenico’s
astonishment, ordered all of the chocolate in the shop. And while he
was excitedly counting it out the signorina kept talking to him about
the weather and the scenery and the olive crop until he was so overcome
by the honour that he could do nothing but bob his head and murmur,
‘_Si, si, eccelenza; si, si, eccelenza_,’ to everything she said.
And as soon as she had mounted her horse again and ridden away, with a
final wave of her hand to the little black-eyed children, Domenico
hurried to the _Croce d’Oro_ to inform the landlord that he also had
had the honour of entertaining the _signorina Americana_, who had
bought chocolate to the amount of five lire—five lire! And had given
it all away! The blacksmith’s wife, who had followed Domenico to hear
the news, remarked that, for her part, she thought it a sin to spend so
much for chocolate; the signorina might have given the money just as
well, and they could have had meat for Sunday. But Domenico was more
ready this time to condone the fault. ‘_Si, si_,’ he returned, with a
nod of his head: ‘the signorina meant well, no doubt, but she could not
understand the needs of poor people. He supposed that they lived on
chocolate all the time at the villa, and naturally did not realize that
persons who worked for their living found meat more nourishing.
When Marcia returned home with the announcement that she had visited
Castel Vivalanti, her uncle replied, with an elaborate frown, ‘I
suppose you scattered soldi broadcast through the streets, and have
started fifty young Italians on the broad road to Pauperism’
‘Not a single soldo!’ she reassured him. ‘I distributed nothing more
demoralizing than a few cakes of chocolate.’
‘You’ll make a scientific philanthropist if you keep on,’ Mr. Copley
laughed, but his inner reflections coincided somewhat with those of the
blacksmith’s wife.
Marcia’s explorations were likewise extended in other directions, and
before the first week was over she had visited most of the villages
from Palestrina to Subiaco. As a result, the chief article of diet in
the Sabine mountains bade fair to become sweet chocolate; while
Domenico, the baker, instead of being grateful for this unexpected flow
of custom, complained to his friends of the trouble it caused. No
sooner would he send into Rome for a fresh supply than the signorina
would come and carry the whole of it off. At that rate, it was clearly
impossible to keep it in stock.
By means of largesses of chocolate to the children, or possibly by a
smile and a friendly air, Marcia had established in a very short time a
speaking acquaintance with the whole neighbourhood. And on sunny
mornings, as she rode between the olive orchards and the wheat fields,
more than one worker straightened his back to call a pleased ‘_Buona
passeggiata_, signorina,’ to the fair-haired stranger princess, who
came from the land across the water where, it was rumoured, gold could
be dug from the ground like potatoes and every one was rich.
All about that region the advent of the foreigners was the subject of
chief interest—especially because they were Americani, for many of the
people were thinking of becoming Americani themselves. The servants of
the villa, when they condescended to drink a glass of wine at the inn
of the _Croce d’Oro_, were almost objects of veneration, because they
could talk so intimately of the life these ‘stranger princes’ led—the
stranger princes would have been astonished could they have heard some
of the details of these recitals.
* * * * *
And so the Copley dynasty began at Castel Vivalanti. The life soon fell
into a daily routine, as life in even the best of places will. Three
meals and tea, a book in the shadiness of the ilex grove to the tune of
the splashing fountain, a siesta at noon, a drive in the afternoon, and
a long night’s sleep were the sum of Vivalanti’s resources. Marcia
liked it. Italy had got its hold upon her, and for the present she was
content to drift. But Mr. Copley, after a few days of lounging on the
balustrade, smoking countless cigarettes and hungrily reading such
newspapers as drifted out on the somewhat casual mails, had his horse
saddled one morning and rode to Palestrina to the station. After that
he went into Rome almost every day, and the peasants in the wayside
vineyards came to know him as well as his niece; but they did not take
off their hats and smile as they did to her, for he rode past with
unseeing eyes. Rich men, they said, had no thought for such as they,
and they turned back to their work with a sullen scowl. Work at the
best is hard enough, and it is a pity when the smile that makes it
lighter is withheld; Howard Copley would have been the last to do it
had he realized. But his thoughts were bent on other things, and how
could the peasants know that while he galloped by so carelessly his
mind was planning a way to get them bread?
Marcia spent many half-hours the first few weeks in loitering about the
ruins of the old villa. It was a dream-haunted spot which spoke
pathetically of a bygone time with bygone ideals. She could never quite
reconcile the crumbling arches, the fantastic rock-work, and the
grass-grown terraces with the ‘Young Italy’ of Monte Citorio thirty
miles away. To eyes fresh from the New World it seemed half unreal.
One afternoon she had started to walk across the fields to Castel
Vivalanti, but the fields had proved too sunny and she had stopped in
the shade of the cypresses instead. Even the ruins seemed to be
revivified by the warm touch of spring. Blue and white anemones,
rose-coloured cyclamen, yellow laburnum, burst from every cranny of the
stones. Marcia glanced about with an air of delighted approval. A Pan
with his pipes was all that was needed to make the picture complete.
She dropped down on the coping of the fountain, and with her chin in
her hands gazed dreamily at the moss-bearded merman who, two centuries
before, had spouted water from his twisted conch-shell. She was
suddenly startled from her reverie by hearing a voice exclaim, ‘_Buon
giorno_, signorina!’ and she looked up quickly to find Paul Dessart.
‘Mr. Dessart!’ she cried in amazement. ‘Where in the world did you come
from?’
‘The inn of _Sant’ Agapito_ at Palestrina. Benoit and I are making it
the centre of a sketching expedition. We get a sort of hill fever every
spring, and when the disease reaches a certain point we pack up and set
out for the Sabines.’
‘And how did you manage to find us?’
‘Purely chance,’ he returned more or less truthfully. ‘I picked out
this road as a promising field, and when I came to the gateway, being
an artist, I couldn’t resist the temptation of coming in. I didn’t know
that it was Villa Vivalanti or that I should find you here.’ He sat
down on the edge of the fountain and looked about.
‘Well?’ Marcia inquired.
‘I don’t wonder that you wanted to exchange Rome for this! May I make a
little sketch, and will you stay and talk to me until it is finished?’
‘That depends upon how long it takes you to make a little sketch. I
shall subscribe to no _carte-blanche_ promises.’
He got out a box of water-colours from one pocket of his Norfolk jacket
and a large pad from the other, and having filled his cup at the little
rush-choked stream which once had fed the fountain, set to work without
more ado.
‘I heard from the Roystons this morning,’ said Marcia, presently, and
immediately she was sorry that she had not started some other subject.
In their former conversations Paul’s relations with his family had
never proved a very fortunate topic.
‘Any bad news?’ he inquired flippantly.
‘They will reach Rome in a week or so.’
‘Holy Week—I might have known it! Miss Copley,’ he looked at her
appealingly, ‘you know what an indefatigable woman my aunt is. She will
make me escort her to every religious function that blessed city
offers; it isn’t her way to miss anything.’
Marcia smiled slightly at the picture; it was lifelike.
‘I shall be stopping in Palestrina when they come,’ he added.
She let this observation pass in a disapproving silence.
‘Oh, well,’ he sighed, ‘I’ll stay and tote them around if you think I
ought. The Bible says, you know, “Love your relatives and show mercy
unto them that despitefully use you.”’
Marcia flashed a sudden laugh and then looked grave.
Paul glanced up at her quickly. ‘I suppose my aunt told you no end of
bad things about me?’
‘Was there anything to tell?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’ve committed the unpardonable sin of
preferring art in Rome to coal in Pittsburg.’
He dropped the subject and turned back to his picture, and Marcia sat
watching him as he industriously splashed in colour. Occasionally their
eyes met when he raised his head, and if his own lingered a moment
longer than convention warranted—being an artist, he was excusable,
for she was distinctly an addition to the moss-covered fountain. The
young man may have prolonged the situation somewhat; in any case, the
sun’s rays were beginning to slant when he finally pocketed his colours
and presented the picture with a bow. It was a dainty little sketch of
a ruined grotto and a broken statue, with the sunlight flickering
through the trees on the flower-sprinkled grass.
‘Really, is it for me?’ she asked. ‘It’s lovely, Mr. Dessart; and when
I go away from Rome I can remember both you and the villa by it.’
‘When you go away?’ he asked, with an audible note of anxiety in his
voice. ‘But I thought you had come to live with your uncle.’
‘Oh, for the present,’ she returned. ‘But I’m going back to America in
the indefinite future.’
He breathed an exaggerated sigh of relief.
‘The indefinite future doesn’t bother me. Before it comes you’ll change
your mind—everybody does. It’s merely the present I want to be sure
of.’
Marcia glanced at him a moment with a half-provocative laugh; and then,
without responding, she turned her head and appeared to study the stone
village up on the height. She was quite conscious that he was watching
her, and she was equally conscious that her pale-blue muslin gown and
her rosebud hat formed an admirable contrast to the frowning old
merman. When she turned back there was a shade of amusement in her
glance. Paul did not speak, but he did not lower his eyes nor in any
degree veil his visible admiration. She rose with a half-shrug and
brushed back a stray lock of hair that was blowing in her eyes.
‘I’m hungry,’ she remarked in an exasperatingly matter-of-fact tone.
‘Let’s go back and get some tea.’
‘Will Mrs. Copley receive a jacket and knickerbockers?’
‘Mrs. Copley will be delighted. Visitors are a godsend at Villa
Vivalanti.’
They passed from the deep shade of the cypresses to the sun-flecked
laurel path that skirted the wheat field. As they strolled along, in no
great hurry to reach the villa, they laughed and chatted lightly; but
the most important things they said occurred in the pauses when no
words were spoken. The young man carried his hat in his hand,
carelessly switching the branches with it as he passed. His shining
light-brown hair—almost the colour of Marcia’s own—lay on his
forehead in a tangled mass and stirred gently in the wind. She noted it
in an approving sidewise glance, and quickly turned away again lest he
should look up and catch her eyes upon him.
In the ilex grove they paused for a moment as the sound of mingled
voices reached them from the terrace.
‘Listen,’ Marcia whispered, with her finger on her lips; and as she
recognized the tones she made a slight grimace. ‘My two enemies! The
Contessa Torrenieri and Mr. Sybert. The contessa has a villa at Tivoli.
This is very kind of her, is it not? Nine miles is a long distance just
to pay a call.’
As they advanced toward the tea-table, placed under the trees at the
end of the terrace, they found an unexpectedly august party—not only
the Contessa Torrenieri and the secretary of the Embassy, but the
American consul-general as well. The men had evidently but just
arrived, as Mrs. Copley was still engaged with their welcome.
‘Mr. Melville, you come at exactly the right time. We are having
mushroom ragoût to-night, which, if I remember, is your favourite
dish—but why didn’t you bring your wife?’
‘My wife, my dear lady, is at present in Capri and shows no intention
of coming home. Your husband, pitying my loneliness, insisted on
bringing me out for the night.’
‘I am glad that he did—we shall hope to see you later, however, when
Mrs. Melville can come too. Mr. Sybert,’ she added, turning toward the
younger man, ‘you can’t know how we miss not having you drop in at all
hours of the day. We didn’t realize what a necessary member of the
family you had become until we had to do without you.’
Marcia, overhearing this speech, politely suppressed a smile as she
presented the young painter. He was included in the general acclaim.
‘This is charming!’ Mrs. Copley declared. ‘I was just complaining to
the Contessa Torrenieri that not a soul had visited us since we came
out to the villa, and here are three almost before the words are out of
my mouth!’
Pietro, appearing with a trayful of cups, put an end to these
amenities; and, reinforced by Gerald, they had an unusually festive
tea-party. Mr. Copley had once remarked concerning Paul Dessart that he
would be an ornament to any dinner-table, and he undoubtedly proved
himself an ornament to-day.
Melville, introducing the subject of a famous monastery lately
suppressed by the government, gave rise to a discussion involving many
and various opinions. The contessa and Dessart hotly defended the
homeless monks; while the other men, from a political point of view,
were inclined to applaud the action of the premier. Their arguments
were strong, but the little contessa, two slender hands gesticulating
excitedly, stanchly held her own; though a ‘White’ in politics, her
sympathies, on occasion, stuck persistently to the other side. The
church had owned the property for five centuries, the government for a
quarter of a century. Which had the better right? And aside from the
justice of the question—Dessart backed her up—for ascetic reasons
alone, the monks should be allowed to stay. Who wished to have the
beauties of frescoed chapels and carved choir-stalls pointed out by
blue-uniformed government officials whose coats didn’t fit? It spoiled
the poetry. Names of cardinals and prelates and Italian princes passed
glibly; and the politicians finally retired beaten. Marcia, listening,
thought approvingly that the young artist was a match for the
diplomats, and she could not help but acknowledge further that whatever
faults the contessa might possess, dullness was not among them.
It was Gerald, however, who furnished the chief diversion that
afternoon. Upon being forbidden to take a third _maritozzo_, he rose
reluctantly, shook the crumbs from his blouse, and drifted off toward
the ilex grove to occupy himself with the collection of lizards which
he kept in a box under a stone garden seat. The group about the
tea-table was shortly startled by a splash and a scream, and they
hastened with one accord to the scene of the disaster. Mr. Copley,
arriving first, was in time to pluck his son from the fountain, like
Achilles, by a heel.
‘What’s the matter, Howard?’ Mrs. Copley called as the others anxiously
hurried up.
‘Nothing serious,’ he reassured her. ‘Gerald has merely been trying to
identify himself with his environment.’
Gerald, dripping and sputtering, came out at this point with the
astounding assertion that Marietta had pushed him in. Marietta chimed
into the general confusion with a volley of Latin ejaculations. She
push him in! _Madonna mia_, what a fib! Why should she do such a thing
as that when it would only put her to the trouble of dressing him
again? She had told him repeatedly not to fall into the fountain, but
the moment her back was turned he disobeyed.
Amid a chorus of laughter and suggestions, of wails and protestations,
the nurse, the boy, and his father and mother set out for the house to
settle the question, leaving the guests at the scene of the tragedy. As
they strolled back to the terrace the contessa very adroitly held
Sybert on one side and Dessart on the other, while with a great deal of
animation and gesture she recounted a diverting bit of Roman gossip.
Melville and Marcia followed after, the latter with a speculative eye
on the group in front, and an amused appreciation of the fact that the
young artist would very much have preferred dropping behind. Possibly
the contessa divined this too; in any case, she held him fast. The
consul-general was discussing a criticism he had recently read of the
American diplomatic service, and his opinion of the writer was
vigorous. Melville’s views were likely to be both vigorously conceived
and vigorously expressed.
‘In any case,’ he summed up his remarks, ‘America has no call to be
ashamed of her representative to Italy. His Excellency is a fine
example of the right man in the right place.’
‘And his Excellency’s nephew?’ she inquired, her eyes on the lounging
figure in front of them.
‘Is an equally fine example of the right man in the wrong place.’
‘I thought you were one of the people who stood up for him.’
‘You thought I was one of the people who stood up for him? Well,
certainly, why not?’ Melville’s tone contained the suggestion of a
challenge; he had fought so many battles in Sybert’s behalf that a
belligerent attitude over the question had become subconscious.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Marcia vaguely. ‘Lots of people don’t like
him.’
Melville struck a match, lit a cigar, and vigorously puffed it into a
glow; then he observed: ‘Lots of people are idiots.’
Marcia laughed and apologized—
‘Excuse me, but you are all so funny about Mr. Sybert. One day I hear
the most extravagant things in his praise, and the next, the most
disparaging things in his dispraise. It’s difficult to know what to
believe of such a changeable person as that.’
‘Just let me tell you one thing, Miss Marcia, and that is, that in this
world a man who has no enemies is not to be trusted—I don’t know how
it may be in the world to come. At for Sybert, you may safely believe
what his friends say of him.’
‘In that case he certainly does not show his best side to the world.’
‘He probably thinks his best side nobody’s business but his own.’ And
then, as a thought re-occurred to him, he glanced at her a moment in
silence, while a brief smile flickered across his aggressively forceful
face. She could not interpret the smile, but it was vaguely irritating,
and as he did not have anything further to say, she pursued her theme
rough-shod.
‘When you see a person who doesn’t take any interest in his own
country; whose only aim is to be thought a cosmopolitan, a man of the
world; whose business in life is to attend social functions and make
after-dinner speeches—well, naturally, you can’t blame people for not
taking him very seriously.’ She finished with a gesture of disdain.
‘You were telling me a little while ago, Miss Marcia, about some of the
people in Castel Vivalanti. You appear to be rather proud of your
broad-mindedness in occasionally being able to detect the real man
underneath the peasant—don’t you think you might push your penetration
just one step further and discover a real man, a personality, beneath
the man of the world? Once in a while it exists.’
‘You can’t argue me into liking Mr. Sybert,’ she laughed; ‘Uncle Howard
has tried it and failed.’
Mr. and Mrs. Copley returned shortly to their guests; and the contessa,
bemoaning the nine miles, announced that she must go. Mr. Copley
suggested that nine miles would be no longer after dinner than before,
but the lady was obdurate and her carriage was ordered. She took her
departure amid a graceful flurry of farewell. The contessa had an
unerring instinct for effect, and her exits and her entrances were
divertingly spectacular. She bade Mrs. Copley, Marcia, and the
consul-general good-bye upon the terrace, and trailed across the marble
flagging, attended—at a careful distance from her train—by the three
remaining men. Sybert handed her into the carriage, Dessart arranged
the lap-robe, while Copley brought up the rear, gingerly bearing her
lace parasol. With a gay little tilt of her white-plumed hat toward the
group on the terrace and an all-inclusive flash of black eyes, she was
finally off, followed by the courtly bows of her three cavaliers.
Marcia, with Sybert and Dessart on either hand, continued to stroll up
and down the terrace, while her aunt and uncle entertained Melville
amid the furnished comfort of the loggia. Sybert would ordinarily have
joined the group on the loggia, but he happened to be in the middle of
a discussion with Dessart regarding the new and, according to most
people, scandalous proposition for levelling the Seven Hills. The two
men seemed to be diametrically opposed to all their views, and were
equally far apart in their methods of arguing. Dessart would lunge into
flights of exaggerated rhetoric, piling up adjectives and metaphors
until by sheer weight he had carried his listeners off their feet;
while Sybert, with a curt phrase, would knock the corner-stone from
under the finished edifice. The latter’s method of fencing had always
irritated Marcia beyond measure. He had a fashion of stating his point,
and then abandoning his adversary’s eloquence in mid-air, as if it were
not worth his while to argue further. To-day, having come to a deadlock
in the matter of the _piano regolatore_, they dropped the subject, and
pausing by the terrace parapet, they stood looking down on the plain
below.
Dessart scanned it eagerly with eyes quick to catch every contrast and
tone; he noted the varying purples of the distance, the narrow ribbon
of glimmering gold where sky and plain met the sea, the misty whiteness
of Rome, the sharply cut outline of Monte Soracte. It was perfect as a
picture—composition, perspective, colour-scheme—nothing might be
bettered. He sighed a contented sigh.
‘Even I,’ he murmured, ‘couldn’t suggest a single change.’
A slight smile crept over Sybert’s sombre face.
‘I could suggest a number.’
The young painter brought a reproachful gaze to bear upon him.
‘Ah,’ he agreed, ‘and I can imagine the direction they’d take! Miss
Copley,’ he added, turning to Marcia, ‘let me tell you of the thing I
saw the other day on the Roman Campagna: a sight which was enough to
make a right-minded man sick. I saw—’ there was a tragic pause—a
McCormick reaper and binder!’
Sybert uttered a short laugh.
‘I am glad that you did; and I only wish it were possible for one to
see more.’
‘Man! Man! You don’t know what you are saying!’ Paul cried. There were
tears in his voice. ‘A McCormick reaper, I tell you, painted red and
yellow and blue—the man who did it should have been compelled to drink
his paint.’
Marcia laughed, and he added disgustedly: ‘The thing sows and reaps and
binds all at once. One shudders to think of its activities—and that in
the Agra Romana, which picturesque peasants have spaded and planted and
mowed by hand for thousands of years.’
‘Not, however, a particularly economical way of cultivating the
Campagna,’ Sybert observed.
‘Economical way of cultivating the Campagna!’ Dessart repeated the
words with a groan. ‘Is there no place in the world sacred to beauty?
Must America flood every corner of the habitable globe with reapers and
sewing-machines and trolley-cars? The way they’re sophisticating these
adorably antique peasants is criminal.’
‘That’s the way it seems to me,’ Marcia agreed cordially. ‘Uncle Howard
says they haven’t enough to eat; but they certainly do look happy, and
they don’t look thin. I can’t help believing he exaggerates the
trouble.’
‘An Italian, Miss Copley, who doesn’t know where his next meal is
coming from, will lie on his back in the sunshine, thinking how pretty
the sky looks; and he will get as much pleasure from the prospect as he
would from his dinner. If that isn’t the art of being happy, I don’t
know what is. And that is why I hate to have Italy spoiled.’
‘Well, Dessart, I fancy we all hate that,’ Sybert returned. ‘Though I
am afraid we should quarrel over definitions.’ He stretched out his
hand toward the west, where the plain joined the sea by the ruins of
Ostia and the Pontine Marshes. It was a great, barren, desolate waste;
unpeopled, uncultivated, fever-stricken.
‘Don’t you think it would be rather a fine thing,’ he asked, ‘to see
that land drained and planted and lived on again as it was perhaps two
thousand years ago?’
Marcia shook her head. ‘I should rather have it left just as it is.
Possibly a few might gain, but think of the poetry and picturesqueness
and romance that the many would lose! Once in a while, Mr. Sybert, it
seems as if utility might give way to poetry—especially on the Roman
Campagna. It is more fitting that it should be desolate and bare, with
only a few wandering shepherds and herds, and no buildings but ruined
towers and Latin tombs—a sort of burial-place for Ancient Rome.’
‘The living have a few rights—even in Rome.’
‘They seem to have a good many,’ Dessart agreed. ‘Oh, I know what you
reformers want! You’d like to see the city full of smoke-stacks and
machinery, and the Campagna laid out in garden plots, and everybody
getting good wages and six per cent. interest; with all the people
dressed alike in ready-made clothing instead of peasant costume, and
nobody poor and nobody picturesque.’
Sybert did not reply for a moment, as with half-shut eyes he studied
the distance. He was thinking of a ride he had taken three days before.
He had gone out with a hunting-party to one of the great Campagna
estates, owned by a Roman prince whose only interest in the land was to
draw from it every possible _centesime_ of income. They had stopped to
water their horses at a cluster of straw huts where the farm labourers
lived, and Sybert had dismounted and gone into one of them to talk to
the people. It was dark and damp, with a dirt floor and rude bunks
along the sides. There, fifty human beings lived crowded together,
breathing the heavy, pestilential air. They had come down to bands from
their mountain homes, searching for work, and had sold their lives to
the prince for thirty cents a day.
The picture flashed across him now of their pale, apathetic faces, of
the dumb reproach in their eyes, and for a second he felt tempted to
describe it. But with the reflection that neither of the two before him
would care any more about it than had the landlord prince, he changed
his expression into a careless shrug.
‘It will be some time before we’ll see that,’ he answered Dessart’s
speech.
‘But you’d like it, wouldn’t you?’ Marcia persisted.
‘Yes; wouldn’t you?’
‘No,’ she laughed, ‘I can’t say that I should! I decidedly prefer the
peasants as they are. They are far more attractive when they are poor,
and since they are happy in spite of it, I don’t see why it is our
place to object.’
Sybert eyed the pavement impassively a moment: then he raised his head
and turned to Marcia. He swept her a glance from head to foot which
took in every detail of her dainty gown, her careless grace as she
leaned against the balustrade, and he made no endeavour to conceal the
look of critically cold contempt in his eyes. Marcia returned his
glance with an air of angry challenge; not a word was spoken, but it
was an open declaration of war.